My head hasn't hurt this bad from thinking since I saw inception... I don't know how to believe. I saw on SC this Morning that a player for the cardinals said he met her... Right now I am leaning more to he tried pulling a quick one to win votes for the Heisman, but it's too confusing.

One does not simply met Manti Teo's girlfriend. Her black gates are guarded by more than just orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep. The great eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire, ash, and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.

Manti Te'o's dead GF isn't real. This was proven by Deadspin. There remains some question as to whether he was a victim of an elaborate online hoax (or Catfish) or he was in on the hoax in order to play up his image/profile for Heisman votes.

Some remaining theories are: 1) He is gay and this was his cover-up that got out of control. 2) He was in on it, but didn't expect it to be such a story that got out of control. 3) He didn't know about it until later, once it was too big to come out with until after the season. I am sure there are more, but that's the gist.

Hasn't Tuiasosopo been confirmed as gay? So if that is true, it would add another layer to this story and point towards option #3.

I also believe that Mike Freeman (of CBS Sports) confirmed a report about an anonymous interivew with a ND player stating players on the team knew Manti's girlfriend wasn't real, and knew that Manti made up the story.

I listened to him this morning on the way to work and what he said was that one thing in favor of believing the story was that Swarbrick said what he did last night. He still is waiting for the rest of the story to come out, but his reasoning was it would be more detrimental to ND for Swarbrick to have backed up Te'o and be wrong than it was to simply say, 'eh, the kid messed up.'

And Greenberg is Golic's friend...he may not openly root or root against him, but in interest of the show's dynamic, he keeps the peace by not being anti-ND. And, its my personaly opinion Greenberg keeps an open mind about most things, even if he is a bit naive about many things.

Becasue that was not my take away from Greenberg's comments at all. I did not hear Golic and would not be surprised for him to defend Teo and the program, but Greenberg was much more skeptical as were the other ESPN guests.

I think they are realizing what I may be realizing, that even though the ND version of the story seems far fetched, the deadspin article does not add up either. Deadspin would have you believe that first round draft pick player, devout Mormon, humble and charitable guy decides that a dead girlfriend story would compliment a dead grandma story to just the right degree to motivate my team, earn me praise and get me some Heisman votes so I am going to invent a person that I can then kill of on the same day as my grandma and this will be believed, it will be awesome and I will win the Heisman. I may not believe Swarbrick word for word, but I can't say I am that much more sold on the deadspin version.

I regret to inform you that you are regarding the deadspin article as everybody originally treated Teo's story. Deadspin is not reporting the "truth," they have a conclusion in mind and a set of facts and they have presented the facts in a fashion that leads you to their desired conclusion. The word "SPIN" is in the name of the site for god sake. Truth does not exist in media anymore. The media creates the story now, truth has nothing to do with it. ESPN and Sports Illustrated created one story. Deadspin has created another one. Both stories could have been created either with Teo's complete complicity or without him even saying a word. Neither of them are "true" nor do they try to be. Wakeup. Please. To quote JFK (and I don't do so lightly), look through the other end of the looking glass here. You are still being had, just by somebody else.

I am not too surprised ESPN and Golic are all backing Te'o and believing he was the victim. They all feel dumb for running all those "heart-warming" stories like they did about the fake GF and not realizing it was a hoax. BTW, ESPN radio is great, though, but Mike and Mike kind of fall into the annoying TV talking heads that are on ESPN during the day.

Loved the full display at the presser, tears and all. Maybe he watch part of the NC game before going on stage. Spoiler Alert- Your independent investigation firm of Kelly and Associates likely did not look to hard into this one. Your boy has a bit too much video of himself talking about this person to believe it was "online" only.

I think it was put on by te'o and ND to try and get publicity. I find it hard to believe that Manti Te'o met a girl online and started dating her when he could probably get damn near any girl he wants at ND. Also, did he meet this girl on Facebook or twitter? I find it hard to believe that he messaged one of the hundreds of girls that message him daily.

I also saw Mike Farrell tweet that Manti's girlfriend got the game ball after the Michigan game. What did they mail it to her?

I find this all really hard to believe. I think it was a stunt by Te'o and ND to gain publicity. Just my thought

Te'o was incepted by Leonardo DiCaprio when he was on a flight from South Bend to Hawaii. He was made to think he had a girlfriend and that she was terminally ill for publicity purposes. Only after he awoke on Dec. 26th did he come to his bearings that it was just all a dream.

But it's weird... So his grandma dies and one of the first thing he thinks of is to say "hey, great time for my fake girlfriend to die... before i get caught." Like that wouldn't blow up in his face? If he's gay the dumbest thing to do is call attention to your sex/relationship life.

That said, he could always use her as the excuse why he can't get involved with anyone else. That's the only thing I can think of.

I agree... all he would have had to say was "The relationship was getting too serious/time consuming/whatever; and we aren't seeing each other anymore."

No one, including his parent or teammates would have questioned that logic... because that happens all the time. Unlike, the stupid BS under duress answer he came up with. There is more to a motive on someones part for the killing off of the "girlfriend", vs. just simply breaking up in my opinion. No need for a HUGE lie, when a simple "eh, we called it off" works just fine.

Damit, now i'm interested enough in this story to log on and post about it!

How do you guaratee that your parents do not end up wanting to go to the funeral of your fake dead girlfriend? A girl they know from phone coversations, yet have never met? You say she died at the same time as your real grandmother. The parents can't be in both places.

The deadspin story says that the grandmother died after a long illness. I would guess Teo made up the car accident story right around the time the family thought the grandmother was going to die. Then grandma pulls thru and so does the GF. But now you can't say the GF got into another car accident, so you make up a cancer diagnosis and wait for grandma to pass.

Yeah, to go along with what Erik said. We all see how the media loves to pan to GF's/Wives of players during the games, so its plausable that the MSM asked if they could meet her, interview her, put her on TV.

Te'o being 21, and therefore stupid, probably started making small lies about why she couldn't interview, go to games, ect. It got out of control and they started making big lies (car accident) as to why she was not available. Then perhaps seeing the writing on the wall they killed her hoping that it would be a quick end. Also, why not kill her on the same day his grandma died to try and fly under the cover of that?

To a 21 year old, it probably seemed like the best idea out there.

I want to point out that this is all my own ideas, and I have no facts giving credit to any of that.

What if he panicked because people would have expected her to come to the Grandma's funeral, so the only the he could think of was to have her die as well.................................................................................

I have to wonder if ESPN had been making noises about face with her at the Stanford game or bringing her down to LA for the USC game. That would be another reason for her to sick or dead. For all we know she could have gotten sick and ESPN said "That's okay, we'll bring the cameras to her" so she had to die.

The theory as other people mentioned, family, friends, etc. started asking too many questions about her. It was convenient for her to die the same day as his grandmother so that his friends and family couldn't attend a funeral. The leukemia was a built in excuse for her inability to travel and attend social functions. He didn't intend for it to be a media story--just a way to get everyone off his case. (not necessarily what I think, but just combining plausible theories).

However, why not just break up? The only thing I could think of is he would then be continually pressured to meet a new girl. If his girlfriend died, he has an excuse for a very long time to say he just isn't ready for another relationship.

because one cannot keep a lie such as this going on and on. Especially after college when a pro career would offer more opportunity to actually meet her. More and more people were more than likely asking about her so he had to end it.

I have heard the same speculation. If you think about it, it could make sense. Manti is the best player on ND's football team. If ND operates like any other big football program, this guy has his pick of women on campus. I would assume that many of his teammates regularly sample the hottest of ND's women (which, I know, it's ND, but every college has SOME hot women, simply by virtue of there being a large number of girls between 18-22). The peer pressure on a top flight football player to engage in similar activities must be huge, so if for some reason - perhaps if he were, in fact, gay - he did not want to engage, and wanted a great excuse to opt out of the hook-up scene, what better way than to invent a long distance relationship. The problem with such an invention is that eventually, people ask why she hasn't taken a visit to South Bend or attended any of his games (in particular the ones in California). Hence, the whole illness / death / tragedy thing.

Who knows - obviously this is all baseless speculation. If true, however, while I feel bad that he wasn't comfortable just coming out, he is shameless to perpetrate such a lie and to then allow it to grow to the point where he is receiving media adoration for it.

Once she got sick, he could no longer break it off with her, so she had to die. It was convenient that she died the same day as his grandmother. Otherwise his family might have wanted to go to her funeral.

Why did she have to get sick? That question seems to point towards trying for publicity, not a coverup, although it could have been both.

My first and last home games as a student (4 years undergrad, 1 year grad school). Hence the 30-4 record in the next sentence. In those 5 years, Michigan was 30 and 4 at home (2002 Iowa loss, 2005 Notre Dame, 2005 Minnesota, 2005 Ohio State)

I don't know if it was posted here or not, but one former NFL player has reportedly confirmed that Lennay Kekua "is" indeed "real", and this player has no connection to Te'o.

HOWEVER

He states that he met Kekua IN REAL LIFE from a friend of his - Ronaiah Tuaisosopo. That's right. He met a REAL version of Lennay Kekua from Ronaiah. This leads me to believe that this was indeed, an extremely extremely elaborate hoax perpetuated by Ronaiah himself, without the involvement of Te'o.

Whomever this girl was that Ronaiah was bringing around with him to introduce to people as Lennay was a.) certainly not his cousin, and b.) not really called Lennay.

He apparently met a girl named Lennay at a ND vs. Stanford game in person, first. And then they continued a long-distance relationship. The connection to Ronaiah is that he was apparently the one who was the source of this "fake girl". Te'o also mentioned meeting this Lennay girl, and apparently talked to stanford players if they knew this girl. In fact, other people associate with Ronaiah seemed to believe that Lennay was real also.

This makes me think that there really was a girl and that Roniah and this girl were really huge jackasses.

Oh snap, the plot thickens... so are we back to believing it was a hoax on the poor kid?

Starting to average out the two stories and i get:

He met o'girl, then some online relationship carried on, pretending it was o'girl. Then he found out it wasn't her, but was too embarassed. Rather than go the "it didn't work out, it's over" routine, he decided Eff it... She's dead to me. Then this was misinterpreted, everyone thought she literally died.

It is the coverup that gets you. He's also saying he told ND about this prior to the National Championship game and they started looking into it, yet right up until the game he was mentioning how much he missed Lenny in interviews. He was also going to say something "next week" and all this nebulous shit.

Oh well at least ND managed to keep this under control until post NC game. A distraction like this could have led to them getting embarrassed in that game...

Perhaps he's speaking in such a way to tell the truth while avoiding some details. He might have met a girl, but her name's definitely not Lennay Kekua. So in essence, he did in factnever meet Lennay, but met some other girl and is really embarrassed that he got super-catfished.

But if Ron was using an actual person to pose as Lennay, why would he use photos of someone else entirely? The "in-person" version would clearly have to be in on the hoax, so why not just use her photo?

The "Reba" girl seemed to be the source of the online presence of the girl, maybe it's entirely possible that "Reba" was in on it the whole time and when contacted by Deadspin, she wanted to avoid being caught in any legal trouble and faked that she was concerned? She might have traveled with Ronaiah to meet all these people? Maybe she was the voice behind Lennay after all?

But that doesn't make sense either. "Reba" is apparently the one who pointed Deadspin to this Ronaiah guy in the first place. If her goal is to avoid being caught because she was in on it, why point them to her actual accomplice who could later rat her out? Why not just say, wow, I have no idea who used my Facebook photos?

Let's say the Deadspin "sources" are not bs-ing, and that the pics, etc are linked to someone that knew Te'o (and we have no reason to doubt their reporting so far). If that is the case, then this was not classic "catfishing" since it was related to someone who knew him. In that case, the only two most interesting questions are 1) When Te'o "really" knew this was BS and 2) When he knew that these people were related to acquiantances.

If 1)= from the beginning, then 2)=from the beginning no doubt and he either wanted to create a narrative to promote himself among others or hide something (the most common thing would be being gay). Fwiw, I think that he seems like a guy who would want to hide something more than do more self-promotion.

Story that makes most sense in this case= He had a gay relationship with that guy and glossed it over due to Samoan Culture x Catholic School x Mormon x Football culture issues

If 1)= Sometime after it started but before recently, then it seems like someone was trying to eff with him that was close to him (this Tuiasosopo dude). In this case, it would not really matter when 2) occured, however when exactly 1) happened would impact his blame for letting the dead GF narrative get out of control.

Story that makes most sense in this case= He had some haters (or people who were envious/in love, whatever) who knew him and wanted to eff with him because of Samoan Culture x Catholic School x Mormon x Football culture weirdness that made him far more a sucker than any one of us can imagine.

If 1)= When he said it did (ie a few weeks ago) then, wow, naivete writ large in a way that boggles my mind.

Story that makes most sense in this case= Same as previous scenario, haters x naivete on massive scale.

Weekend at Teo's. In a modern twist on the classic Weekend at Bernies Part II, a Heisman trophy candidate invites Brent Musberger and Kirk Herbstreit for a weekend at his beach house in Hawaii to meet his girlfriend. Hilarity ensues when Teo spends the weekend trying to cover up the fact that the girlfriend doesnt exist. Intrigue abounds while Teo fends off the inquisitive Musberger while also trying to fend off the evil Johnny Football and AJ McCarron, hitmen from the criminal organization known as SEC who are trying to steal the girlfriend and the legendary black pearl that Teo found while pearl diving off the coast of Maui.

I know people meet on the internet and I know people have long distance relationships, but...you have a long distance phone/internet relationship for 3 years and NEVER MET??????

At some point don't you want to meet this person? Wouldn't you try to meet over one of the summer vacations? I just can't fathom two people would keep a long distance phone/internet relationship going for 3 years and not meet at least once.

I just find it absolutely fascinating! It gets even more so with all the new information coming to the forefront every day.

Best non-sports/sports story I can recall.

At first I thought he was doing this as a cover for his fondness of dudes,(NTTAWWT) but now I have no idea what to think. I am starting to feel for the kid if he truly is naive enough to fall for the hoax.

Dont fall for it folks.... he and his cousin Tuasosopo contrived the whole thing for a publicity stunt, and then when it got too big, they continued to lie about it, not knowing what else to do. Obviously they were stupid enough to lie at each step along the way and think nobody would find out.

The amount of attention being given to this whole situation, which has little to nothing to do with actual play on the field and ultimately boils down to nothing more than "did some guy lie about having a girlfriend that died?", is further confirmation of my opinion that most sports fans are really just soap opera fans. The only difference is that this soap opera is about a large man in tight pants rather than a stereotypical fictional handsome two-timing doctor.

I love this story so much. Te'o absolutely played this thing up to pull people's heart strings in hopes it would win him the running man trophy. This is so awesome. It makes the running man voters look stupid for admitting that this bullshit story had anything to do with the way they voted. It makes ND look like idiots because, well... yea and it makes Te'o look like a complete scumbag. All the way around it is pure columbian awesome. I love it. I hope it never ends.

2012 ND season: Kill a kid on a crane in a windstorm. Cover up a gang rape. Create a fake person and tell everyone they died to hopefully get your star LB the Heisman. Get crushed in the national championship game. /Flips down sunglasses.

Tuiosiosoippspoi is gay himself and was getting off on this whole thing. He concocted this girl, maybe even had a female accomplice, but he himself was running the twitter thing and writing emails and what-not and getting off on it. The problem them is who was Te'o talking to on the phone? Could it have been him using a girly voice? It's happened before. But who did Te'o meet at Stanford? Could have been the same girl?

What's also interesting is when Tuiospuoipuosi asked the "real" girl to pose for a picture with MKMK or whatever on it. The story has to be deeper.

I just thought I had it all figured out but it just slipped through my grasp. Now I'm back to having no idea what is going on. Just when you think that an athlete couldn't find a way to get in trouble that hadn't been tried before . . .

There is no excusing ND for sitting on this after he told them about it on the 26th. No excuse, especially from a school that thinks they are holier than thou and look down upon all other institutions as being less than them. Shame on Notre Dame.

I just hope they keep going after that "He was a dupe" line until they just have a handful of bloody feathers left. That way we have quotes from the school admitting they let gullible morons in and whenever they pull out their holier than thou academics standard line, we can counter with quotes where their AD admits Teo was a moron.

That's the rub isn't it? Either Notre Dame is a den of liars or a den of immature knuckleheads backed by an incompetent communications department. I mean, if ND is going to try and spin this some way, I'd assume they choose the latter. Still makes it hard for an ND coach to stand in some kid's living room and tell his parents about how they develop boys into men or whatever PR fluff they spew to sway recruits.

ND really can't win here. I was just shocked they were so quick to make Teo is an unknowning dupe the party line last night. Now they live or die by that one and run the risk of future evidence showing Swarbrick was lying like a whore last night.

Last night, I had a dream that my wife and I were out fishing and all we could catch were catfish. I don't eat catfish and it took me about 30 minutes this morning to try and figure out the dream. Damn you Jack Swarbrick!

One of the more interesting ones that they ask revolves around what Te'o might be able to provide to substantiate the relationship, if anything. I do actually wonder if he would provide the appropriate records if asked to do so. There would have to be a trail of dialed numbers and messages in other media.

The other one is something myself and others discussed some in last night's thread - why did he perpetuate the falsehood once he supposedly discovered it in early December? According to Notre Dame sources (i.e., Jack Swarbrick), Te'o received a call in early December from the supposedly dead girlfriend, but this didn't stop him from carrying on as if this call had never taken place for a few weeks at least. Indeed, stories about this were being run all the way up to the NC pregame and neither Te'o or the school (which knew by then) did anything to prevent it.

Another thing that USA Today mentions that also strikes me as odd is the South Bend Tribune story that ran on how Te'o and Kekau met, but indeed last night, Swarbrick says it was solely an online relationship. The paper even said that the interview was with Te'o's father, not Manti himself. Clearly, for a long time, a few versions of the relationship were floating around and different people were aware of different versions.

So...with all the attention this story received dating back to September and the number of features on it, are you telling me that at no time did one of "Reba's" friends or family members see her picture as Teo's girlfriend and say WTF? How is that possible? ('For those who haven't read the actual Deadspin piece, 'Reba' is the woman whose picture was used as Lennay.)

If they don't follow college football, it wouldn't be that shocking if they didn't know. This morning, when I mentioned the story to some of my co-workers, some of them (who don't follow sports) had no idea who Te'o was, or anything about this story.

That totally makes sense...but surely someone who interacts with this woman has to follow football. I'm not saying I think she's in on it, I just think it's weird that none of her friends saw the picture in the press and thought, "Uh, what?" That's what makes this whole thing so completely strange. Every element has a strange (outlandish) but plausible explanation.

The LennayKay Twitter account just went active and said they'd be releasing a statement between 11 and Noon. I assume that would be Pacific Time given the controlled likely lives in that time zone and the tweet below references PST.

I have a feeling they will take all the heat in hopes to keep Te'o's image intact. This will back fire even more because the media is relentless with this kind of stuff. Te'o and ND will be exposed for the fakes that they are and all will be right with the world.... Hopefully.

The only issue is places like ESPN or scum like Pat Forde might be slow to pull the trigger (or even try to defend ND). They know sooner or later the Teo story will die but they'll still need access to ND and a working relationship with the program. I'm worried about part of the media opting to spin the ND party line for payback further down the road. We might have to settle for TMZ and Deadspin doing all the dirt digging.

Will someone please remind me to reach out to Manti and give him the contact information for my PR firm? The one I hired before my campaign went out and got rid of all that nonsense about me allegedly killing a few dirty hookers that alledgedly wouldn't give me what I wanted for a good price. All I alledgedly wanted was a little rub-and-tug and they each allegedly wanted to charge me $25! What a joke. Anyway, my PR firm went and cleared all that up for me. I bet they'd be happy to help Manti - they are miracle workers! Alledgedly.

One of my high school teammates spent a lot of time trying to cover up the fact he was gay, but when you spend that much time in close proximity with someone you figure it out. It's hard to keep those kinds of lies going.

If the second section is correct though, it suggests Teo had more cynical motives here in terms of fueling Heisman hopes, as opposed to needing a beard.

I am acquaintances of a current ND coach, he keeps in touch with all of his HS buddies one of whom is my brother in law, each year they all take a road trip down to South Bend and watch a game.

Well this year they went down for the Michigan game and as that was the weekend the GF was supposed to be buried everyone was asking how he was coping with it and he told the group to "not worry about it, its not a big deal".

Its hearsay but still in my mind it helps to lend credibility to the fact that the team knew what was going on.

The debate among teammates wasn't whether or not Manti actually knew this girl - it was clear that they had been in contact; no, players just didn't think that it was fair to call Lennay Kekua Manti's girlfriend, period (it is well-known on campus that he has had relations with other girls during his time at Notre Dame). They recognized what was going on for what it was - a terrible publicity stunt used to fuel Manti Te'o's Heisman campaign. In fact, many of the players privately commented that they didn't want the students to wear leis in support of Manti and wouldn't participate themselves - they cited that the team never responded so publicly to tragic events for other players. But there was also the feeling that Manti didn't deserve to benefit from publicity from the death of somebody he barely knew.

Yeah so I'm still not sold on the gay thing. Of course anonymous sources and all that, but who at ND is going to rock the boat with the administration gagging everyone.

The writer says that he thinks that Te'o was duped at first but then started lying for the sake of publicity. Sorry if this has already been posted and that I don't have time to write a longer synopsis.

and was notified through facebook as well by family members. But this girl was FAKE, and does not have a family and probably did not have a facebook page. Unless a bunch of people were involved in this. Hopefully it was just a few people. Either way, it seems weird that Te'o never questioned anything and also said that he had looked deep into her soulful eyes, which clearly was not true.

Take this with a grain of salt. Word on the ND message boards is that this story has been linked to Lane Kiffin. I am not kidding, just sharing what I saw. They did not appear to be joking, but who knows with this story. I would be less shocked if this is true, compared to everything else that has come out about this story.

Can someone confirm to me that Te'o had talked about his fake gf AFTER he found out she was fake (December 26 or earlier?)...because if so, then that means he was probably in on it. I thought I heard he was talking about her in Miami at the NC game but I am not positive. Can someone confirm this timelime?

EDIT: LSAClassOf2000 posted an article above by USAtoday I see that talks about this

Also, has anyone brought up that one of the reasons he may have played so poorly in the NC game is because he knew that deadspin was about to release this story? I am not saying Bama probably would have had his number anyways, but one would think that that may have affected his performance a bit? ...just haven't seen this notion thrown out yet anywhere. Thoughts?

who was on the Tim Brando Show today said they were tipped off just last Friday, had most of the details sourced by Monday & were seeking further comments from those in question but after their inquiries were ignored decided to go ahead with what they had developed to that point.

that many Notre Dame fans would be happier if there actually was a Lennay Kekua, and she actuallydiddie of leukemia? On balance, isn't this a story bringing relief that something terribly sad didn't happen?

Notre Dame missed that opportunity yesterday, and their credibility (or what's left of it) will suffer if anything comes out of this. Te'o can still salvage his image somewhat by just coming clean and apologizing, but ND pushed the cover up too hard yesterday, albeit after consulting Te'o. I don't know what went on behind closed doors, but they should have pushed Te'o to come as clean as he can and offer support. I have a feeling they didn't push anything other than what was convenient for them to hear for their image.

Sure they can always come back and say, "poor us.. we were duped by Te'o", but good luck getting people to trust your future internal investigations when the poop hits the fan for a violation or another girl gets sexually assaulted by a player on your team.

Awful announcing printed transcript of an interview Fowler did of Teo at the Heisman trophy where Teo again talks about how impactful his girlfriend's death was. Well that sinks Teo's hoax story completely as this occurred after Teo claimed he received the phone call from his dead girlfriend and realized it was a hoax. He wasn't even asked about her, he went out of his way to volunteer the information.

Edit: It is an interesting answer for a couple of reasons. 1) He stumbles when he calls her his girlfriend. Tough to tell from a written transcript if that is from emotion or from use of the word girlfriend. 2) He does volunteer the information. He could have just as easily said losing his grandmother was the moment he will never forget. I'm sure if he hadn't offered this info about the girlfriend he would have been asked about it, but based on this he didn't wait to be asked about it he just offered it up. 3) On the other hand, this was just 2 days after the phone call that "informed" him she wasn't dead, so he could still be reeling about everything. But, this is another hole for which he is going to have to respond.

Yes, this reads really bad now, but that's easy to say with hindsight.

At the time, you'd be tempted to chalk it up to T'eo being emotional, being perhaps reluctant to share private or intimate details about his girlfriend, or his love life.

My analysis, taking the answers on their face, is that T'eo appears to be fabricating much of his answers, is evasive at points, is vague about things that should be easy to answer, and offers up odd bits of detail unexpectedly. This does not necessarily preclude him being duped--he could be ad libbing answers because he does not exactly want to tell the SI reporter he had an online girlfriend he never met, whose background he himself does not know very well.

No way Teo was not involved at some point in the deception. Also SI comes off pretty poorly, he was dating her for almost a year and can't name her major or year of graduation. That doesn't set off any red flags.